“Squeeze Me,” An Audible Novel by Carl Hiaasen

It seems like anything I could tell you about Hiassen’s latest send-up would get a BLEEP! SPOILER ALERT! But OK, let me try.

It’s present-day Palm Beach, Florida, perhaps the capital of wealthy American retirees. An old lady nicknamed Kiki has gone missing when no one ought to be – at a party – and is nowhere to be found. Another guest shows up at the affair, but this one undesirable: a twenty-foot long Burmese python, a species of snake which has become an epidemic in South Florida (see “Guardians of the Glades” on the Discovery Channel). Thus we meet our main character, the attractive Angie Armstrong, at her rather unattractive business of chopping the heads off of said Burmese pythons.

At this point, Hiassen whips the plot into a froth. No one is spared as he portrays the “Potussies,” an elite group of these wealthy, booze-addled heiresses {I shall let you find out what Potussies are for yourself).

Not content with ripping the wealthy and privileged to shreds, Hiassen must of course cry out, “Enter, Stage Right” to his version of the misanthropic former president, who goes by the moniker Mastodon. He froths at the mouth when he learns a Honduran (purportedly) alien is accused of murder – ostensibly Kiki’s. Neither is his wife, Mockingbird, spared Hiassen’s unflinching rapier wit as she amuses herself with her Secret Service agent, who . . . naw, this one’s too big a spoiler alert.

You can’t begin to imagine how this mashup ends, and I’m certainly not going to tell you. What I will say is the the Audible version is narrated by my favorite voiceover actor, Scott Brick, who is on this story like frosting on a cake.

Read. Listen. Except if you live in a Palm Beach mansion, you will love it.